Free Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman

the thick black marker strokes of a child or educationally sub-normal said closed due to varicose veins which under normal circumstances would have been enough to put me off food, but I was physically drained and needed the calories. Another hundred yards up there was a pizzeria. They took a note of my order and told me to come back in twenty minutes.
    I crossed the road to a phone box and was pleasantly surprised to find it in working order. I phoned Patricia. Her dad answered. He said she wasn't in and after some persuasion he told me she'd said she was going down to Belfast to collect some things but not to tell me if I phoned.
    The pizzeria's twenty minutes turned out to be forty-five and even then they didn't look particularly concerned. Hey, sometimes you've got to wait for quality,' a spotty guy behind the counter said when I complained. When I was going out the door I heard him say quietly, 'And sometimes you've got to wait for shite too,' but I was too hungry to punch his lights out. And too small.
    On the corner of Margaret's street a small, thick-set man with a thick moustache and short black beard stopped me and asked for a light.
    'Sorry, I don't smoke.'
    'Never worry, mate,' he said, moving past me with a curly, annoying grin on his face, 'stunts your growth anyway.'
    Margaret's front door was slightly open. I pushed it and walked into the darkened hall. I shouted: 'The pizza man's here!' Up the stairs and headed for the kitchen. There was no reply. I turned the light on in the lounge and stopped dead in my tracks. It had been turned upside down. Seats ripped, drawers emptied, records out of their sleeves strewn across the floor. Margaret's portrait had been slashed and hung in tatters from the wall. I dropped the pizzas and ran up the stairs in the dark to Margaret's room.
    It was lit by the dull orange glow of her heavily shaded bedside lamp. Margaret was in bed, the thin cotton sheet pulled up around her neck, just as I'd left her. Her eyes were focused on the far wall, on nothing.
    I said: 'What the fuck's going on?'
    Her eyes shifted to mine, her lips parted slightly and she made the nearest sound possible to a human whimper.
    I ran to the bed. As I touched the side of it her face contorted in pain.
    'Jesus, Margaret, what's ... ?'
    I pulled the sheet back. She was naked underneath. Her upper body was soaked in blood. It oozed from three or four black-tinged holes. I felt her whole body vibrate. I tried to pull her to me, hold her safe, but it was like trying to pick up a spider's web intact, blood fell everywhere and she let out a little helpless cry. I let her back softly onto the pillow, her eyes wide now, pleading hopelessly. She raised her arm slightly, touched me, pulled me lightly towards her. She kissed my cheek. Lips hard, cold. Her head moved sideways to my ear and I could barely hear her whisper above the tom-tom thump of my own heart. 'Dan
    Barely a voice at all.
    'Dan ... div ...'
    Another tremor shook her.
    'Margaret ... shhhh ... let me get...'
    'Dan ... no ... no...' And her words were slurred. 'Dan ... divorce ... Jack ... divorce ... Jack...'
    And then her head fell back and she was silent. She took a couple of shallow breaths. And then she was dead.
    I stared at her for I don't know how long. I pulled the sheet back up over her, tucking it in under her chin so that only her calm, white face showed. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was only asleep.
    Suddenly my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, great rolling waves of shock that rocked the whole bed. I gripped the side of it till they stopped, my blood-soaked hands putting eerie prints on the sheet.
    I stood up but my legs buckled under me and I crashed to the floor unconscious.
     
    I thought people only fainted in films. And then it was only women.
    I don't know how long I was out. I didn't dream. I was still on the floor beside Margaret's bed. For a brief moment I hoped it had been a dream, but then I saw Margaret's face